


Another Christmas

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas at Grimmauld's Place, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 15:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17185460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Christmas 1995 at Grimmauld's Place, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and everything that has been left unsaid.





	Another Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to write something about these two and Christmas.

”What do you want?”  
  
”Nothing,” Remus said, which was of course a blatant lie. For a second there was something so familiar in Sirius’ eyes that it ached somewhere deep inside of him, or rather, in the exact place he tried to keep hidden because that was where he had put all his memories of how much he had loved Sirius.  
  
Then Sirius blinked. “Everyone’s gone.” Which probably meant: _you should be gone, too._  
  
“I know.” Remus didn’t dare to think about what it meant.  
  
“Maybe the old man asked you to, I don’t know, to see that I don’t do anything stupid.” It was masked to sound like a joke, but the edge in Sirius’ voice was sharp and his eyes were fixed on Remus’.  
  
“No. I just…”  
  
_I just wanted to see you._  
  
For half a year he had wanted to say something like that to Sirius. But he was a goddamn coward, that’s what he was, he didn’t fucking dare to take a chance that Sirius would laugh at him or, what would’ve been worse, would look at him with pity. For thirteen years he had told himself over and over again that his odd mixture of love and hatred for the man who had betrayed him and all their friends was a sign that he was mad or rotten inside or worse.  
  
“Remus,” Sirius said, his voice tired, “you don’t need to be here.”  
  
A fucking coward. That’s what he was. He walked past Sirius to the kitchen and searched the cupboards until he found a half-empty bottle of firewhiskey. He poured some in the first glass he found that wasn’t covered with dust and listened to Sirius’ steps coming to him on the soft carpet, then stopping a few feet away. His hands were shaking a little.  
  
He should’ve told Sirius right away that he was still in love with him, yeah, he should’ve told Sirius the moment he saw Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, or if not there, then the moment Sirius stepped over the threshold to Remus’ father’s cottage in Yorkshire. He should’ve told Sirius.  
  
“I think,” he said now, “that I’m going to stay here. For a few hours. If you don’t mind.”  
  
“I don’t mind,” Sirius said in his polite tone that meant nothing.  
  
“Great,” Remus said and took a sip of his glass.  
  
They ended up in the library, he sitting in the armchair that probably was at least a hundred years old, mostly to create an illusion that he wasn’t arguing with himself about why he hadn’t yet fucked off, and Sirius standing in the doorway as if uncertain how to enter the room.  
  
“So,” Sirius said after a long silence filled with the sound of the clock ticking on the wall, mixed with the off-beat rhythm of Remus’ heart, “you don’t come here very often.”  
  
Remus took a deep breath. _Sorry_ , he thought and opened his mouth, but it tasted like dust. He drunk a bit more of the whiskey.  
  
“I get it,” Sirius said and finally entered the room, walked a slow circle on the carpet and sat down in the armchair on the opposite side of the room. “You’re busy.”  
  
“I’m really not,” Remus said. There was no way he could stand Sirius watching him like that, not for long. He would either say everything he had ever wanted to say to Sirius or fuck off without saying a word.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m not saying that I thought you’d come to see me sometimes,” Sirius said, “but I thought…”  
  
“Sorry,” Remus said, only it sounded a lot like a cough.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“You don’t have to…” Sirius shifted in the armchair, pushed his shoulder back and stared at Remus. “I mean, you don’t owe me anything.”  
  
Sometimes he thought he owed everything to Sirius, every fucking thing, and that had to be the reason why for thirteen years he had been unable to stop loving Sirius. There shouldn’t have been a way in an universe with any sense in it that someone like Sirius Black would fall in love with someone like Remus Lupin or, if the case was that Sirius had never actually loved him, which was what he had been telling himself for thirteen years until there was no way to tell if it was a truth or not, well, if Sirius had never loved him, then it was a wonder anyway that Sirius had made him believe he was loved, that Sirius had kissed him and held him and fucked him. A fucking wonder. If it wasn’t for Sirius, Remus would’ve never got to know what it was like to lie together in a bed damp with sweat and wine spilled when the kissing had become something else, naked, so close to each other, tied into a knot so tight that nothing could get in between. Or so he had thought.  
  
And he would’ve never got to know what it was like to lose that.  
  
“You git,” Sirius said in a quiet voice. “You’re thinking that you do, you fucking idiot.”  
  
“No, I’m not.”  
  
“Yes, you are.”  
  
“I just…” Or what it was like to miss someone so badly you thought you’d go mad from it. Or what it was like to hate someone so much you genuinely thought you couldn’t bear it and still hate yourself a little bit more.  
  
“Just tell me,” Sirius said, something odd in his voice, like hunger. He was holding the bottle of firewhiskey but hadn’t drunk of it yet or perhaps Remus hadn’t noticed. “It’s Christmas. Why’re you here?”  
  
Remus emptied his glass. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”  
  
“Anyone else,” Sirius said.  
  
“Anyone else.”  
  
“Oh, fuck. For thirteen years?”  
  
Remus opened his mouth and then closed it again. “It wasn’t like… I know it sounds pathetic.”  
  
“No, it doesn’t,” Sirius said slowly. “It’s just… I wouldn’t have wanted you…”  
  
“I know. I just couldn’t.”  
  
“You couldn’t what?”  
  
Remus shook his head.  
  
“Because you must’ve hated me. I get it.”  
  
“I didn’t…” He turned to look at the window, at the heavy purple curtains drawn in front of it. “Yeah. But I also…”  
  
The clock was ticking on the wall. If only the room hadn’t been so large, if only they had been sitting closer to each other, if only it didn’t seem like he had to shout every word for Sirius to hear them, perhaps then this would’ve been easier.  
  
“There’re some things I didn’t tell you,” he said. “In the summer. When you were staying at my place.”  
  
“Really,” Sirius said.  
  
“I didn’t know how to.”  
  
“Like,” Sirius said, “what things?”  
  
“Nothing important,” Remus said and cleared his throat. “Are you going to drink that whiskey? Because I could…”  
  
He regretted saying it right away, because Sirius stood up and walked to him, took the glass from his hand and poured some whiskey in it, then passed it to him so that their fingers brushed. He couldn’t breathe. It had been fucking thirteen years or more since he had been in love with Sirius Black and he still couldn’t breathe.  
  
“So,” Sirius said, standing in front of him, as if waiting for him to drink his whiskey, “what things? Surely you can tell me now. If they aren’t important.”  
  
“Can you just,” he said and tried not to look at Sirius but there was no way he could look anywhere else now, “I don’t know, sit down?”  
  
“Sure,” Sirius said, walked to the nearest armchair, then dragged it towards Remus until the chairs were almost side by side. Then Sirius sat down. “Like this?”  
  
_Fuck you_ , Remus thought.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “It was really nothing important.”  
  
“I loved you,” Sirius said, staring at him so that he almost missed the words. “I love you.”  
  
The silence was so heavy he couldn’t have gone anywhere even if he had wanted to, even if there had been anywhere to go to. “No, you don’t.”  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said, “I do. But, just. I don’t know if it’s the kind of love you’d want.”  
  
“Why?” Remus’ voice came out shattered and hoarse. He raised the glass onto his mouth and drank but the whiskey seemed to get stuck in his throat. _God._ You’d think that it got drained out of you somehow, the love and the misery of it; that thirteen years would at least make you, if not to forget, at least a little bit wiser. But his heart was beating heavily and desperately as if any minute now it was going to give up, and only because Sirius was watching him.  
  
“I just think,” Sirius said slowly, “I think you hated me for a long time.”  
  
Remus shook his head.  
  
“Just say it.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“You thought I got all of our friends killed,” Sirius said, pushing his knees forward so they almost brushed against Remus’ thigh. “And I bet you thought I never loved you, you idiot. That’d be just the kind of a thing you’d think. You were always like that. Couldn’t believe anyone would actually love –“  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Sirius closed his mouth slowly, licked his lower lip. “So, I’m right.”  
  
“I wouldn’t say _hate_ ,” Remus said, although it was ringing in his ears, said by his own voice, hoarse and cracking for the lack of sleep and years of misery, _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you._ But by the late 80’s, he had managed to bury it inside so that he no more spent late nights or early mornings drunk in the bathroom floor, whispering to the walls. “And it’s not like I didn’t…”  
  
“You didn’t what?”  
  
“Like I didn’t, you know. Still think of you.”  
  
Sirius’ eyes said _oh, really._  
  
“Like that.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
Remus leaned against the back of the chair. “Sirius, you can’t _love_ me.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Sirius said, leaning towards Remus. Thirteen years ago, he had been the most beautiful man Remus had ever seen and the only man Remus had ever wanted to be with, which probably wasn’t true at all but that’s how he thought about it now that time had made some of the memories dull and some so sharp they still cut through anything. Now everything Sirius had had then was still there but rearranged as if Azkaban had taken his pieces apart and then shuffled them and put them back together but not quite right. Possibly that was what had happened. But Remus’ head was heavy from the whiskey and the house around them was quiet and full of old regrets, so they fit in there quite well if you thought about it. And he couldn’t stop staring at Sirius. He stared at the way Sirius’ fingers held the bottle, and the way Sirius’ arms seemed too thin and too long, and the way the canvas of Sirius’ trousers wrinkled in his lap when he shifted in the chair.  
  
“Fuck you right back,” Remus said.  
  
“I mean,” Sirius said in a tired voice, “fuck you for thinking that I can’t do with my love whatever I want. If I love you then I fucking love you and you can’t change that. You can’t fucking argue about that.”  
  
“But you can’t really…” Remus said and swallowed. “It’s been thirteen years.”  
  
“So, what you meant to tell me last summer was that you don’t love me anymore,” Sirius said. “Not even a little bit. Because it’s been thirteen years. And now you came here on goddamn Christmas Eve to inform me about that. That you don’t love me.”  
  
“Not exactly,” Remus said and tried to drink of the whiskey but his glass was empty.  
  
“Give me that,” Sirius said, took his glass and poured some whiskey in it, then passed it back to him. “You should just say it, then. I dare you. Tell me you don’t love me.”  
  
He stared at Sirius. “I don’t hate you anymore.”  
  
“Great,” Sirius said.  
  
“I did, though. I had to.”  
  
“I know,” Sirius said, straightening his back. “I get it.”  
  
“But I didn’t really stop… you know, the rest of it.”  
  
“You didn’t stop what?”  
  
Remus shook his head.  
  
“Fucking hell, Remus,” Sirius said and shifted so that there was a shadow covering half of his face, and like that he could’ve almost been 21 years old again. Almost. They could’ve been sitting in their flat in Diagon Alley, tired after fighting and shagging and then fighting again as they were those days, and half-drunk, and always unable to fix whatever was wrong, perhaps because they never talked about it, which perhaps was because Remus could never make himself say the things that he meant. Like, _why don’t you look me in the eyes anymore, do you really think I’m the spy, I am not. I am not._  
  
“I didn’t stop loving you.”  
  
Sirius sat very still in his armchair. “What?”  
  
“Don’t you fucking tell me you didn’t know,” Remus said, his voice coming out breathless and his words out of rhythm.  
  
“Of course I _knew_ ,” Sirius said, and there was something shifting in his voice, “kind of, you just told me you haven’t been with anyone in thirteen years, you fucking idiot, and in the summer you used to look at me like you wanted to, I don’t know, hit me in the face and then take me to the bed, but also I thought you were probably in love with who I was when I was 21, and I’m not that anymore, I’m not anything, I haven’t _lived_ …”  
  
“Don’t say that.”  
  
“You’re more than when you were 21 and I’m less.”  
  
“That’s not true.”  
  
Sirius grimaced and it made all the angles and lines on his face seem even sharper. “Isn’t it?”  
  
“But what I meant,” Remus said, “what I meant by saying that I didn’t stop loving you, is that I still… I don’t want the boy you were when you were 21, _I’m_ not 21 anymore, what I want to is…”  
  
“What?”  
  
He breathed in and out and it didn’t help a bit.  
  
Sirius placed his palms on his thighs and leaned towards Remus. “What do you want, Remus?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You fucking coward,” Sirius said and looked at him as if trying to coax something out of him. “I love you.”  
  
“You can’t. I’m not –“  
  
“What do you _want?_ Just tell me.”  
  
“Could we just…” But the thought of Sirius’ hands on his skin, Sirius’ fingers slowly unwrapping him from all the years and all the self-regret and all the memories about the nights spent crying on the bathroom floor, and later, days spent living a life that seemed like an endless row of days that he had no use of, the thought of it made his feet turn into stone on the carpet. He couldn’t do it. But he couldn’t go, either. And Sirius was watching him as if waiting for him to tell, _really_ tell what he wanted, so that Sirius could do it to him. He took a deep breath. “Could you just…”  
  
“I don’t think I can fuck you,” Sirius said, something nervous in his voice. “Maybe it’s better if I tell you that right away. In case that’s what you want. It just hasn’t worked out for me lately. Since Azkaban. I mean… I _can’t._ But –“  
  
“I don’t need you to _fuck me_ ,” Remus said and cleared his throat.  
  
“You used to like it,” Sirius said, his voice suddenly sharp. “So I thought, maybe you still –“  
  
“Yes,” Remus said, “ _no,_ I mean, I like it, or I think I still like it, but I didn’t… It’s been _thirteen years._ ”  
  
Sirius still looked a bit offended. Remus pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes, just for a second. The clock on the wall was clicking, and then there was the sound of breaking glass on the soft carpet.  
  
“ _Shit._ I’m sorry, I’ll just –“  
  
“Kreacher will take care of it,” Sirius said, not even looking at the broken glass on the floor. “You look like crap, Remus. Like you haven’t slept in a week.”  
  
“You look like crap, too.”  
  
“Thank you,” Sirius said and took a sip of the whiskey. “I hate this place. And most days I don’t taste what I eat.”  
  
“And you can’t fuck me,” Remus said, grabbing his knees now that he didn’t have the glass to hold onto. “So, it doesn’t work. At all.”  
  
Sirius shook his head. For a second, he looked nothing but sad and tired.  
  
“Since you got out?”  
  
“Since I went in, probably.”  
  
“Maybe it’ll come back.”  
  
“Maybe,” Sirius said in a flat tone.  
  
“But you have to know I don’t…” Remus took a deep breath, “I don’t _mind._ It’s just… I can’t make you…”  
  
Fuck how much he wanted to kiss Sirius.  
  
He blinked. “I can’t make you come, that’s what I meant.”  
  
“No,” Sirius said and pushed his hair back with both hands, maybe to hide his face for a second. Then he grinned. The grin seemed stretched at the edges. “But I can.” He leaned forward and reached for Remus, placed his palm on Remus’ thigh, then ran it towards Remus’ lap until he couldn’t reach any further. Remus could hear his own breathing but not Sirius’, and wasn’t that like having sex with a ghost, or rather trying to have sex with a ghost. He was accustomed to that. That was what he had been doing for thirteen years now. He watched as Sirius stood up from the chair and walked to him, two small steps, and then tried to open his zipper with clumsy fingers.  
  
“Sirius.”  
  
“I’m trying –“  
  
He grabbed Sirius’ wrists and tried to pull Sirius back up. Sirius’ knees hit the carpet.  
  
“Fuck,” Sirius said, leaning against both the armrest of the chair and Remus’ shoulder, and he was thin, thinner even than Remus had thought. When he settled his hand on Sirius’ back, he could feel the shape of his shoulder blades against his palm, could follow his spine through the layers of clothes. _“Fuck._ When I was… You used to look at me like I was this, I don’t know, like I was too good to be real, and it always bothered me somehow, maybe because I couldn’t make you believe that I loved you. But you used to… once, I think, I came home late at night and you didn’t say a fucking word, you just pulled my clothes off and looked at me like you wanted me to…”  
  
“To fuck me,” Remus said. It would’ve been so easy to kiss Sirius now. Maybe on his ear. He mightn’t have even noticed.  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said, his laughter cold and sharp, “yeah. And now look at me.”  
  
Remus held Sirius by his shoulders, sat down onto the floor narrowly avoiding the broken glass and the stain of whiskey, then pushed his fingers into Sirius’ hair and looked at him.  
  
“Fuck how I’ve missed you,” Sirius said.  
  
“Can I sleep here?” Remus asked. “Please.”  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said.  
  
 “I always thought you were too good to be real.”  
  
“You always were an idiot,” Sirius said, but he was leaning his head against Remus’ palm, his eyes going back and forth on Remus’ face.  
  
“When I thought maybe you hadn’t loved me at all, it made sense.”  
  
“You have to quit,” Sirius said, “quit with the self-pitying. I can’t deal with it anymore. But I want you.”  
  
“You want me to do what?” Remus asked, his voice coming out too thin.  
  
“I don’t care. I want _you._ Whatever is left of you.”  
  
“I want whatever is left of you,” he said. “Can you kiss me?”  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said and kissed him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Later, the room was cold. The wallpaper had odd figures on it, like bleeding roses. The light seemed to come from nowhere. There were stains on the ceiling and the mattress creaked every time Remus as much as drew a breath. Sirius was still asleep, but when Remus tried to climb out of the bed, he woke up with a sharp breath that sounded like he was preparing to jump into the water.  
  
“Good morning,” Remus said.  
  
“Fucking hell,” Sirius said, grabbing Remus’ thigh. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”  
  
“Merry Christmas.”  
  
“Don’t talk to me about Christmas.” The grip of Sirius’ fingers loosened, but his thumb was now drawing slow circles on the inside of Remus’ knee. “So, it was real.”  
  
“What was?”  
  
“The sound you made when you came.”  
  
“Fucking hell –“  
  
“Sorry,” Sirius said, and there was a smile lingering on his mouth that didn’t quite settle with the lines on his face. “I meant, it wasn’t a dream. Because I’ve had dreams about you.”  
  
“Really? What kind of dreams?”  
  
“Filthy,” Sirius said, but then the smile faded away. “Usually we just, I don’t know, sit somewhere, maybe in the kitchen in our flat in Diagon Alley. You drink tea. And I watch you. That kind of dreams.”  
  
“Sounds filthy to me.”  
  
“You idiot,” Sirius said, let go of his knee and lay down on his back. “Are you going to stay for breakfast?”  
  
“If you want me to.”  
  
“Of course I fucking want you to.”  
  
“Good,” he said. “Then I’ll stay.”  
  
“Good,” Sirius said. “I can’t believe you didn’t stop loving me.”  
  
“I can’t believe you didn’t.”  
  
“ _God_ ,” Sirius said and closed his eyes. The shadows on his face were soft. “We’re so lucky.”


End file.
